Federico Cugurullo

Tan Yigitcanlar

Xiaoling Zhang

Sarah Barns

Natalie Marie Gulsrud

Vincent J. Del Casino Jr.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now mediating, and in some cases seen to be controlling, key urban services and infrastructures, thus becoming a prominent feature of the contemporary city. As portrayed in recent studies, the “autonomous city” can be understood as a city where urban artificial intelligences perform tasks and take on roles which have traditionally been the domain of humans. At stake in these debates are questions related to the meaning and ongoing role of intelligence, for both humans and machines. While autonomous cars transport people, service robots run shops, drones deliver goods and city brains govern entire cities, humans are redefining the meaning of what “smart” means in the city and what role the human being may play in future urban spaces. With humans shifted to new sectors of the economy or pushed aside by algorithms and robotic agents creating new ways of seeing and governing the city, we raise the question as to whether or not cities are becoming more autonomous from human experience in the sense that their operation does not rely as much on human inputs anymore.

The Governance of Artificial Intelligence in the “Autonomous City”

Tony Hong

This book enriches the evolving concept of soft power, and China’s approach to soft power, by considering how aspects of Chinese culture, notably the traditional martial art and health promoting exercise Tai Chi Quan, are being successfully promoted around the world by non-state actors, and how this fits alongside China’s state-sponsored soft power promotion. The book contrasts growing soft power promotion by China with the corresponding decline in such activities by Western states, outlines the growth of Tai Chi Quan societies worldwide and explores in detail why Tai Chi Quan appeals so strongly outside China. It shows how Tai Chi Quan introduces many people around the world to Chinese culture and builds links between people inside China and elsewhere in the world. It concludes that Tai Chi Quan achieves what soft power aims to achieve: a good image and long-term friendship.

Tai Chi, Traditional Culture, and the Practice of Public Diplomacy

China's Non-State Soft Power Actors

This research probes into the representations of the Nanjing Massacre in Chinese American literature, in particular Shouhua Qi's When the Purple Mountain Burns, Ha Jin's Nanjing Requiem, Geling Yan's The Flowers of War, and Wing Tek Lum's The Nanjing Massacre: Poems. In light of Rene Girard's theories of violence, in particular his ideas of a circle of violence, mimetic desire, sacrificial substitution, and myth as connected with stereotypes of persecution, this research diagnoses the terrors and horrors depicted in the above-mentioned texts and argues that the Nanjing Massacre as represented in Chinese American literature is no ordinary act of war, but sheer violence---violence taking innocent civilians and surrendered soldiers as scapegoats. Focusing on how each text addresses violence through the lens of perpetrators, rescuers, scapegoats, and secondary witnesses, this research concludes that the surge of the Nanjing Massacre texts at the beginning of the twenty-first century is the collective efforts of Chinese American writers, who are concerned about the witnessing crisis of the Nanjing Massacre and wish to reconstruct the forgotten history by drawing a panoramic view of the intensity and scale of violence borne in this catastrophe.

Representations of the Nanjing Massacre in Chinese American Literature

Perpetrators, Rescuers, Scapegoats, and Secondary Witnesses

Yongnian Zheng

In recent years, China has experienced a revolution in information and communications technology (ICT), in 2003 surpassing the USA as the world’s largest telephone market, and as of February 2008, the number of Chinese Internet users has become the largest in the world. At the same time, China has overtaken the USA as the world’s biggest supplier of information technology goods. However, this transformation has occurred against the backdrop of a resolutely authoritarian political system and strict censorship by the Party-state. This book examines China’s ICT revolution, exploring the social, cultural and political implications of China’s transition to a more information-rich and communication-intensive society. The pace of the development of ICT in China has precipitated much speculation about political change and democratisation. This book explores the reality of ICT in China, showing clearly that whilst China remains a one-party state, with an ever-present and sophisticated regime of censorship, substantial social and political changes have taken place. It considers the ICT revolution in all its aspects, outlining the dominant trends, the impact on other countries of China as an ICT exporter, strategies of government censorship and use of ICT for propaganda, the implications of censorship for Chinese governance, the political implications of internet culture and blogging, and the role of domestic and foreign NGOs. Overall, this book is a vital resource for anyone seeking to understand a rapidly transforming China, both today and in the years to come.

Social Changes and State Responses

China's Information and Communications Technology Revolution

Yang Fu

This book examines the sustainability transition theory in the context of urbanization in China, tracing the development of eco and low-carbon cities. It examines how ideas on building eco-cities and low-carbon cities travel from nation to nation, how they are adopted in the Chinese administrative context and what role inter-scalar actors play in getting the ideas transferred, translated and operationalized on the ground. Offering an overarching theoretical framework that incorporates all urban sustainability experiments in China, the book conducts a comprehensive analysis of the master plans of these new towns and summarizes the normative transition targets of sustainable urban experiments. It explores how they differ from each other and how they influence transition dynamics in practice. By examining four eco and low-carbon new towns deemed representative of current major approaches to sustainability transition management in China, the book provides a detailed depiction of generic transition management and explains the different transitional trajectories for each type of sustainable urban experiment. It demonstrates how subnational-level and city-level transitions mediate the national transition. Through a thorough inquiry into inter-scalar dynamics, institutional arrangements and techno-social innovations in sustainable urban experiments, the book links generalized transition rules and specific contexts to present a full view of the challenges, failures and territorial problems of eco and low-carbon new towns. This book makes a novel contribution to the study of Chinese urbanization by revisiting issues and problems of contemporary urban China. The reflection on these urban issues will provide implications to policymakers, professionals and the common reader interested in the future sustainable urbanism in China.

Xiaoling Zhang

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